Little Women at The Gate Theatre

Squelchy

Anyone heard much buzz on it and anyone know how long a performance runs?

Squelchy

Squelchy wrote: »

Anyone heard much buzz on it and anyone know how long a performance runs?

Seemingly it's just under 3 hours long, including a (roughly) 25 minute interval. For anyone interested.

fluffymuffy

I went to a preview on Monday night. I thought it was fabulous. Very well acted, and the staging was great. Well worth going to see. I got quite emotional at times.
It started just after 7.30 and finished at 10.20, the interval was about 20mins. I didn't feel the time passing at all. The only play I've seen in the Gate that was better was A Christmas carol.

I think opening night is Thursday (16 Nov). Tickets on Mondays are only 25euro. Total bargain!

delbertgrady

The Gate always put something on that's a bit more populist over the Christmas period (A Christmas Carol, The Old Curiosity Shop, Jane Eyre), but just because something is more mainstream, doesn't make it any less valid as theatre. Certainly, in relation to an ensemble cast and - in particular - set design and stage construction (very ambitious, but brilliantly and quickly transformed), this is one of the most impressive productions I've seen in The Gate. All four sisters are excellent, but the ever-reliable Marty Rea as Laurie and Deirdre Donnelly as the family's rich aunt (who gets most of the best lines) almost steal the show. As the previous post says, you're in the theatre for ten minutes short of three hours (including the interval) but you really don't notice the time pass. Recommended.

This was Helen Meany's Irish Times review:
Men have to work and women have to marry for money, sighs Meg, the eldest of the March family. In the opening scene of this adaptation of Louisa May Alcott s 19th-century children's classic, she spells out life's necessities to her sisters. Yet marrying for money is precisely what these resilient young women resist doing, which is one of the reasons the story of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy has been cherished by generations of female readers.
Films, plays and musicals have re-created the New England world of the March sisters and their ever-loving mother, Marmee, growing up during the American civil war while their father is away at the front. While adaptations tend towards the saccharine, Ann-Marie Casey's well-judged new script extracts the most appealing aspects of Little Women and its sequel Good Wives, and jettisons the earnestly pious sections. So, while Marmee gives the girls a homily about the importance of being good and thinking of the misfortunes of others, we quickly move on to the fun stuff. And, in director Michael Barker-Caven's well-upholstered production, genteel poverty doesn't look too arduous.
In a succession of ensemble scenes, we watch Meg dressing up in high heels and curls to find a beau; the complacent Amy falling through the ice and almost drowning; Beth wasting away through sheer saintliness; and the headstrong, slang-loving Jo, writing short stories, romping with Laurie, the Laurence boy, next door, and cutting off her hair for cash. The author's alter ego, Jo, is the most fully characterised of the sisters and the mouthpiece of the book's more radical ideas: that a woman should not have to marry and be dependent, but could earn her own living through her talents and industry.
Played by Lorna Quinn, Jo is the dramatic centre of this production and the scenes between her and the superb Marty Rea as Laurie are marvellously portrayed, as emerging love complicates the ease of their childhood companionship.
The performances of all four sisters succeed in tracing them from early teens to adulthood, with some delicate moments, even as the overall pace becomes breathless, with huge chunks of plot to be squeezed in. The sense of racing to the end of a potted novel undermines the proposal scene between Jo and her German suitor, Prof Bhaer, where she declares that she will marry him as long as they are equal in economic standing: she will support herself.
Christopher Columbus! It could catch on.

TMACK55

I made a special effort to go and see this. It is one of my favourite shows of all time. Love the score - brilliant work!
Wasn't too sure about some of the key scenes - I don't know, just didn't hit the mark in all the right places for me. So glad I went to see it though - another lovely evening at the Gate...is anyone else excited for the book of mormon?! http://www.thebookofmormonmusical.co.uk/

Pretty Polly

Squelchy wrote: »

Seemingly it's just under 3 hours long, including a (roughly) 25 minute interval. For anyone interested.

Yeah thats it exactly. Personally i though it was a bit tedious at times but overall i enjoyed it and would recommend it. I loved Lorna Quinn, i spent the first 20 minutes trying to figure out where i had seen her face before, then it dawned on me...Fair City:)